Informing God?
4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Paul says that we should "let [our] requests be made known to God." This raises a classic question about prayer. Why pray if God knows everything already? How can you inform Someone of something who already knows it (and everything else)?
Why "let your requests be made known to God" when:
"Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things." (Matt.6:32)
"Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. - He knows it before we ask it." (Matt. 6:8)?
Why does God still tell us to inform Him of our requests? Think of all the time and energy that could be saved if the asking phase of the process were eliminated!
It would seem that the reason God instructs and even commands us to make our needs known to Him in spite of the fact that He already knows them is because of the great value for us in prayer. If we received everything from God without asking, we would forget where it was all coming from. We would start to think that it was just a given that all our needs got met. We would forget about God. God knows our needs but often won’t meet our needs until we ask, so that we might be ever learning whom to look to, whom to seek, whom we are dependent on.
Our sinful hearts are so quick to forget God. So God let’s us struggle and calls us to pray, so that we might develop a close relationship with Him over time. Let us make a pathway through the woods of our sin by our frequent travel to the presence of God. And may the path become a road, and may the road become a highway.
Dear Father, forgive me for how quickly I forget about You, in spite of the fact that You are of all things most real and most important and most preeminent. May my life be dominated by Your reality. And, Lord, thank You that You listen to my prayers so intently that You know them before I even pray them. And thank You that You often don’t answer them until I do pray them. Please teach me to pray. Please teach me always to come to You with all my needs.